Amnesty International, a London-based watchdog group, has been active in monitoring, researching, and reporting on human rights issues worldwide.
Examples of Amnesty International initiatives over the past 10 years include: involvement in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in an attempt to ensure that human rights guarantees be mutually respected; focus on perceived human rights abuses in warring African countries; bringing charges of racism and brutality to bear on police in Europe; bringing attention to persistent human rights violations in Russia; advocating for an impartial retrial for a leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement in Brazil.
Additionally, Amnesty International researchers uncovered incidents of war crimes in Kosovo; urged Thailand's military government to avoid possible violence by improving human rights in the run-up to the 10th anniversary of Myanmar's failed democracy uprising; denounced the human rights climate in Cambodia; demanded a government probe into alleged unauthorized detention camps in Sri Lanka; petitioned Indonesia to allow a fact-finding team to investigate accusations of the abduction and torture of pro-democracy activists by that country's military; and accused Britain of selling arms to questionable regimes and deterring political asylum seekers.
While the organization has been effective in launching and carrying out campaigns seeking to highlight and resolve these and other human rights issues, it has also received criticism from some parties for its involvement.
Amnesty International has been accused of biased, distorted reporting, unscientific research, serving special interests in political conflicts, sowing seeds of dissent, and interfering in the internal affairs of the nations it investigates.
